When I first went to school (no, don't laugh!) we learned to read and write. Learning to read was all phonics-based and writing started with pencils and then progressed to dipper- pens.

In secondary school we were allowed fountain pens, which had to be Osmiroid italic pens, and we were rigorously taught in our Art classes how to write aesthetically as well as legibly. This was a skill that was considered essential if one was to survive in the New Elizabethan era, (as it was ambitiously referred to after the Coronation in '53.) Ball-points were, of course, outlawed, and the role of "ink-monitor" - filling the inkwells in the school desks survived well into my teenage years.

One would have thought, logically, that modern Primary education would teach the appropriate written communication skills today, but with one or two isolated exceptions, like Whinstone Primary School, we are raising a generation - generations - in fact, who are totally keyboard illiterate. Just about every executive uses a keyboard on an hourly basis, and the overwhelming majority peer down and tap away with two fingers.

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The technical illiteracy continues with the arrival of PowerPoint, which is almost universally used as an alternative speaker-prompt rather than as an illustration to support the spoken word. But, happily, there are exceptions as this simple but highly informative High School video from the States demonstrates.Yes, it's very amateurish, but I can think of a dozen senior executives who would do well to follow its basic teaching.

This photograph is entitled the girl with the dog. Everything in the photo draws your eye towards her, the perspective of the lines, the shadows and the patch of light as she runs towards the dog. At first glance you might just see the bright tiled facades (of the Moorish Quarter in Almeria) but inevitably she catches your attention.

If the photographer had started by looking for a photograph of a girl and a dog they would probably have been looking for a close-up shot, with a cute smile and a wagging tail. Sometimes, an oblique approach is more powerful.

That's especially true of mass communication; it's the advertisements that you don't immediately "get" that ultimately stick in your mind. Just think about it: how many Brits speak enough German to translate Vorsprung durch Technik...? - and yet anyone can now tell you what that Audi strap-line means - at least in general terms, if not with precise accuracy. Which is just like the photo above. You can't quite see if it's a dog or a cat, and you're guessing it's a girl, but the message is all there and more importantly, you can feel the playfulness in the characters. Just as the word "Technik" hints at solid German engineering even if you don't speak the language.

Communication is not about what you write or say; it's about how people interpret your words, and you don't always need to spell it out in block capitals in order to be understood. In fact, a little subtlety is a powerful weapon in mass-communication. Did you know that to date the mobile communications company ORANGE has never shown a mobile phone handset in any of their TV or cinema advertising? The handset is just a piece of equipment: what ORANGE wants to be associated with are the concepts of community and shared experiences.

What is it that you're trying to tell your audience? Does the key message really need to be centre-stage, or can you be more subtle, focus the audience towards the message and let them absorb the mood. Like the little Spanish girl running down the hot street in the afternoon sun.